2001 Chrysler Town & Country LXi - a couple of issues
 

Hello I am new to this forum. I have a 2001 Chrysler Town & Country LXi and I love it. Well it's not my first choice but it was a fantastic deal and only had 40K on it when I bought it a year and a half ago. An 90 year old couple owned it the whole time. But now I have had some issues in the last couple of months.

- air bag light coming on intermittently
- ac/heater on blast at all times, even when turn off
- driver heated seat not working

Can anyone give me some wisdom on any of these issues?

Thanks so much.

Jason

Hi Jason,

Welcome to the club, hopefully you'll love the car, many here have had theirs for some time and it grows on you!

The couple of faults you have aren't too difficult generally, so lets see how we can solve them.
Air bag light coming on intermittently, this sounds like a sensor fault since it's not on all the time. Does it happen when you turn the steering wheel by any chance? If it comes on when you do a full lock or steering rather than the car wobbling/moving about then it could be the clockspring steering wheel wire which fails (It's normally accompanied by the horn failing, so when the airbag light comes on next immediately try the horn and see if it works). If the horn does work, then it's more likely a sensor fault. Without an advanced diagnostic tool you'll not be able to find the actual fault, but you can do the easy way, under the seats there are various connectors, disconnect and reconnect them all, those are the common ones with get loose connections and will cause the sensor to stop responding and cause the light to come on.
The air bag light is SELF RESETTING, so when you fix the fault it will go off on it's own, so it's a relatively easy one to test and fix yourself.

A/C on full blast, do you have the climate control module? Does the LED fan speed lights show what it should be, or is that stuck on full? (Also are there more than one LED on at the same time on the fan speed) This helps point at either the controller or the fan speed resistors. My money would be on the fan speed resistor. The resistor pack is behind the glovebox, so drop that down, and remove by squeezing at the top, it'll drop down further and out. Behind it you'll find the resistor pack. There are various tutorials on testing and replacing (youtube brought up a few good videos) the unit. It's held on with two screws, either side of it, remove it (two wires black and green go to the fan motor to help identify it).

Driver heated seat, if you're lucky this is also a connector problem similar to the air bag light (seat sensors), so again reconnect all the connectors under the seat, hopefully that'll sort it. I'm assuming the switches illuminate orange to show power is getting to them? (If not then check the fuse under the bonnet, right hand side is where the fuse box is and under the cover it's all labelled) If connector re-connecting doesn't sort it is probably the heater element. Others have had luck replacing these, so have a search around if you're desperate to try and fix that one.

Hope you get on OK, let us know how you get on.